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Greyhound (film)

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Greyhound
Release poster
Directed byAaron Schneider
Screenplay byTom Hanks
Based onThe Good Shepherd
by C. S. Forester
Produced byGary Goetzman
Starring
CinematographyShelly Johnson
Edited by
Music byBlake Neely
Production
companies
Distributed byApple TV+
Sony Pictures Entertainment[1]
Release date
  • July 10, 2020 (2020-07-10)
Running time
91 minutes[2]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$50.3 million[3][4]

Greyhound is a 2020 American war film directed by Aaron Schneider and starring Tom Hanks, who also wrote the screenplay.[5] The film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester, and follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four, defending an Allied convoy from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. The film also stars Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, and Elisabeth Shue.

Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on June 12, 2020, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The release was delayed indefinitely and then canceled because of widespread disruption and shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic. Sony sold the distribution rights to Apple TV+, which released the film digitally on July 10, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the action sequences and effective use of its 90-minute runtime. At the 93rd Academy Awards, the film earned a nomination for Best Sound.

Plot

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In February 1942, Allied convoy HX-25, consisting of 37 merchant and troop ships en route for Liverpool, enters the "Black Pit", the Mid-Atlantic gap, where they will be out of range of protective air cover. The convoy's escort consists of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling, radio call sign "Greyhound", captained by Commander Ernest Krause of the United States Navy; the British Tribal-class destroyer HMS James, call sign "Harry"; the Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor, call sign "Eagle"; and the Canadian Flower-class corvette HMCS Dodge,[6] call sign "Dicky". Krause is overall commander of the escort ships but, despite his seniority and extensive naval education, it is his first wartime command; the captains under him have been at war for more than two years.

Three days into the "Black Pit", high-frequency direction finding intercepts a German transmission and Greyhound identifies a U-boat heading towards the convoy. The sub tries to slip under Greyhound, but Krause sinks it with a full pattern of depth charges. As they return, another U-boat bearing an emblem of a grey wolf sinks a Greek merchant ship. Greyhound too is attacked but with careful maneuvering evades the torpedo. Greyhound receives reports of five other U-boats from the other escorts; a wolfpack is staying just out of firing range, waiting for nightfall when the escorts will have little visibility.

That evening, the 'grey wolf' U-boat torpedoes an oil tanker and escapes Greyhound by using an underwater decoy device called a pillenwerfer, "pill-thrower", so that depth charges are wasted. Krause chooses to rescue survivors from the tanker before going to aid the other ships, which results in the loss of another supply ship. A crew member of the U-boat, identifying as "Grey Wolf", taunts the convoy and its escorts via radio transmission. The wolfpack commences attack that night and sinks three more merchant ships.

The next morning, Krause learns that Greyhound has only six depth charges left. Greyhound and Dicky combine their attacks and use surface broadsides to sink one of the U-boats. Dicky receives minor damage due to the close range, and Greyhound is hit on its port side by the U-boat's deck gun. Mess attendant George Cleveland and two sailors are killed. During the funeral service for them, the Germans sink another Allied ship and badly damage Eagle, which later sinks; Krause allows the crew of Eagle to abandon ship. Although worried about compromising the remaining defenders, Krause chooses to break radio silence; he orders transmission of a single word "help" to the Admiralty. A return message is deciphered as "expect aircraft" and "point X-ray", which suggests reinforcements being dispatched and their rendezvous point shall be modified.

With the convoy close to air cover, Greyhound battles two U-boats. After heavy fighting, Greyhound sinks the "Grey Wolf" with a full broadside. A Catalina deployed by British RAF Coastal Command arrives and Greyhound fires to mark the location of the second U-boat, allowing the flying boat to drop its depth charges and sink it. After assessing contact with the remaining U-boats is lost, the head of the relief escorts, HMS Diamond, arrives and relieves Greyhound and the other two destroyers of duty, ordering them to port for repair and refit in Derry; Krause is congratulated for the four U-boat kills. After he sets the new course, passengers and crew of the convoy ships cheer Greyhound's crew. Krause goes to his cabin, where he finally sleeps.

Cast

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Production

[edit]

The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. The characters and their names remain basically the same (e.g. Ernie Krause is George Krause), but in the book, Krause is more bitter about his life, as he was divorced from Evelyn. She cheated on him, but he recognizes that he had been part of the problem, as he put the Navy ahead of her. In the film, this aspect is omitted and instead a inclusion of a scene is added where Krause proposes to Evelyn to come with him to a beach, though he accepts her hesitant refusal as the war is going on. The character of Cleveland is based on a Filipino messmate in the novel who survives. The film invents a scene where a U-boat uses Greyhound's transmitting frequency to broadcast taunting messages over the ship's loudspeakers.[citation needed]

The fictionalised Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor was based on scans taken of the real Grom-class destroyer ORP Błyskawica, a museum ship in Gdynia, Poland. Pre-production photography took place in January 2018 at sea aboard HMCS Montréal, a frigate of the Royal Canadian Navy. HMCS Sackville, the last surviving Flower-class corvette, was used as the model for the film's corvette, HMCS Dodge. Producers took numerous 3D scans of the restored ship's exterior at Halifax, Nova Scotia to create the CGI version of the corvette.[7]

Filming began in March 2018[8][9][10] aboard USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.[11][12] The actors were trained on the ship.

A fictionalised version of the Kidd is mentioned in the film as having encountered a an underwater decoy device on its first patrol; the actual USS Kidd was not launched until late February 1943. In the studio, sets were created of the bridge and the command center. A gimbal was used to create the effect of crew and furnishings reacting to the ship rolling.[13]

Release

[edit]

Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release on March 22, 2020 in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label. After the rapid onset and disruption of the Covid 19 pandemic, the release was delayed to May 8, 2020, and finally to June 12, 2020.[14][15][16]

Hanks was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier in March 2020 while filming Elvis for Warner Bros.[citation needed]

In May 2020, it was announced that Apple TV+ had acquired distribution rights to Greyhound for about $70 million; Stage 6 Films was left as the sole Sony distributor as of the release of the film.[17] Apple TV+ released the film digitally on July 10, 2020.[18]

Apple said that the film had the biggest debut weekend of any program in the platform's history. Deadline Hollywood said that the figures were "commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit".[19] In November, Variety reported the film was the 24th-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.[20]

Reception

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Critical response

[edit]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 228 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Greyhound's characters aren't as robust as its action sequences, but this fast-paced World War II thriller benefits from its efficiently economical approach".[21] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 37 critics.[22]

Owen Gleiberman, in his review for Variety, said the film is "less a drama than a tense and sturdy diary of the logistics of battle" and "though much of the action is set in the open air of the ship's command perch, Greyhound often feels like a submarine thriller: tense, tight, boxed-in".[23] Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film three out of four and said: "Like the canine, [Greyhound is] trim, narrow of scope, and it runs efficiently and well despite a barrage of on-screen time stamps and vessel identification markers".[24]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C−" and wrote: "A terse and streamlined dad movie that's shorter than a Sunday afternoon nap and just as exciting, Greyhound bobs across the screen like a nuanced character study that's been entombed in a 2,000-ton iron casket and set adrift over the Atlantic. The film offers a handful of brief hints at the tortured hero who Forester invented for his book ... but the whole thing is far too preoccupied with staying afloat to profile the guy at the helm in any meaningful way".[25]

Accolades

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Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref.
Academy Awards April 25, 2021 Best Sound Warren Shaw, Michael Minkler, Beau Borders and David Wyman Nominated [26]
British Academy Film Awards April 11, 2021 Best Special Visual Effects Pete Bebb, Nathan McGuinness and Sebastian von Overheidt Nominated [27]
Best Sound Beau Borders, Christian P. Minkler, Michael Minkler, Warren Shaw and David Wyman Nominated
Cinema Audio Society Awards April 17, 2021 Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Motion Picture – Live Action David Wyman, Michael Minkler, Christian Minkler, Richard Kitting, Beau Borders, Greg Hayes and George A. Lara Nominated [28]
Critics' Choice Movie Awards March 7, 2021 Best Visual Effects Greyhound Nominated [29]
Critics' Choice Super Awards January 10, 2021 Best Action Movie Greyhound Nominated [30]
Best Actor in an Action Movie Tom Hanks Nominated
Denver Film Critics Society January 18, 2021 Best Visual Effects Greyhound Nominated [31]
Golden Reel Awards April 16, 2021 Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Dialogue and ADR for Feature Film Michael Minkler, Warren Shaw, Will Digby, Dave McMoyler, Michelle Pazer, David Tichauer and Paul Carden Nominated [32]
Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Sound Effects and Foley for Feature Film Warren Shaw, Michael Minkler, Will Digby, Ann Scibelli, Jon Title, Jeff Sawyer, Richard Kitting, Odin Benitez, Jason King, Luke Gibleon and Marko Costanzo Won
People's Choice Awards November 15, 2020 Favorite Drama Movie Greyhound Nominated [33]
Favorite Drama Movie Star Tom Hanks Nominated
Favorite Male Movie Star Nominated
San Diego Film Critics Society Awards January 11, 2021 Best Visual Effects Greyhound Nominated [34]
Satellite Awards February 15, 2021 Best Visual Effects Nathan McGuinness and Pete Bebb Nominated [35]
Seattle Film Critics Society February 15, 2021 Best Visual Effects Pete Bebb, Nathan McGuinness, Whitney Richman and Sebastian Theo von Overheidt Nominated [36]
St. Louis Film Critics Association January 17, 2021 Best Action Film Greyhound Nominated [37]
Visual Effects Society Awards April 6, 2021 Outstanding Effects Simulations in a Photoreal Feature Omar Meradi, Jeremy Poupin, Sylvain Robert and Deak Ferrand Nominated [38]
Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Feature Chris Gooch, Tiago Santos, Stu Bruzek and Sneha Amin Nominated

Possible sequel

[edit]

A sequel is in development.[39] As of September 2024, the film is in pre-production.[40]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Film Releases". Apple TV+. Archived from the original on July 10, 2020. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  2. ^ "Greyhound (2020)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Archived from the original on March 7, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
  3. ^ Scott, Mike (25 April 2018). "Who's filming in Louisiana: From 'Captain Marvel' to a new 'Purge'". NOLA.com. Archived from the original on 4 July 2018. Retrieved December 28, 2018.
  4. ^ "Greyhound (2020) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Archived from the original on July 16, 2020. Retrieved July 16, 2020.
  5. ^ Wentling, Nikki (December 3, 2018). "Tom Hanks thinks Hollywood isn't best suited to tell stories of Iraq, Afghanistan wars". Stars and Stripes. Archived from the original on 2018-12-18. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  6. ^ Ahearn, Victoria (23 July 2020). "Canadian warships give 'Greyhound' film authentic touch". Design Engineering.
  7. ^ "HMCS Sackville stars in Tom Hanks movie Greyhound". The Chronicle Herald. Retrieved 3 August 2020.
  8. ^ Busch, Anita (2018-03-07). "'The Irishman's' Stephen Graham Joins Tom Hanks' WWII Film 'Greyhound'". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2018-06-24. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  9. ^ "Elisabeth Shue, Rob Morgan Join Tom Hanks' World War II Drama 'Greyhound'". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 2018-03-10. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  10. ^ N'Duka, Amanda (2018-03-29). "Manuel Garcia-Rulfo Joins Tom Hanks' WWII Drama 'Greyhound'". Deadline. Archived from the original on 2018-07-01. Retrieved 2018-07-03.
  11. ^ "Tom Hank's Greyhound movie set on USS Kidd". Mechtraveller. 2018-01-08. Archived from the original on 2018-07-12. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
  12. ^ "USS Kidd back open, seeing benefits from movie production". WBRZ. 2018-04-30. Archived from the original on 2018-07-12. Retrieved 2018-07-12.
  13. ^ Hanks, Tom (2021-01-18). "After penning the script, Tom Hanks goes to war on the set of 'Greyhound'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-06-14.
  14. ^ Galuppo, Mia (March 30, 2020). "Sony Delays Release of 'Morbius,' 'Ghostbusters,' More Films Due to Coronavirus". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on March 31, 2020. Retrieved March 30, 2020.
  15. ^ Beresford, Trillby (March 5, 2020). "Sony Delays Release Date for War Drama 'Greyhound'". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on January 30, 2021. Retrieved March 5, 2020.
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  19. ^ Fleming, Mike Jr. (July 14, 2020). "Tom Hanks-Starrer 'Greyhound' Torpedoes Apple TV+ Opening Weekend Records". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on July 15, 2020. Retrieved July 14, 2020.
  20. ^ Bridge, Gavin (November 4, 2020). "DATA: 'BORAT 2' SECOND ONLY TO 'HAMILTON' IN MOST-WATCHED U.S. SVOD MOVIES OF 2020". Variety. Archived from the original on November 4, 2020. Retrieved November 4, 2020.
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  23. ^ Gleiberman, Owen (July 6, 2020). "Tom Hanks in 'Greyhound' on Apple TV Plus: Film Review". Variety. Archived from the original on July 6, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
  24. ^ Phillips, Michael (July 6, 2020). "'Greyhound' review: Tom Hanks' World War II Navy tale a good fit on Apple TV Plus". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on July 6, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
  25. ^ Ehrlich, David (July 7, 2020). "'Greyhound' Review: Tom Hanks Is Lost at Sea as a Navy Commander in Apple TV's Rudderless WWII Movie". IndieWire. Archived from the original on July 6, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
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  27. ^ Ravindran, Manori (March 9, 2021). "BAFTA Unveils Film Nominations in Historic Year After Diversity Review: 'Nomadland,' 'Rocks' Lead Nominees". Variety. Archived from the original on March 9, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  28. ^ Tangcay, Jazz (March 2, 2021). "'Greyhound,' 'Mank' and 'News of the World' Among Cinema Audio Society Nominations". Variety. Archived from the original on April 18, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  29. ^ Ramos, Dino-Ray (March 8, 2021). "Critics Choice Awards: 'Nomadland', 'The Crown' Among Top Honorees – Complete Winners List". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on May 3, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  30. ^ "Nominations Announced for the Inaugural 'Critics Choice Super Awards' | Critics Choice Awards". Archived from the original on April 6, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  31. ^ "The 2020 Denver Film Critics Society (DFCS) Winners". Next Best Picture. 18 January 2021. Archived from the original on May 10, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  32. ^ Pedersen, Erik (March 1, 2021). "Sound Editors Nominate 'Wonder Woman', 'Sound Of Metal', 'Tenet' & Others For Golden Reel Awards – Full List". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on March 1, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  33. ^ Del Rosario, Alexandra (October 1, 2020). "E! People's Choice Awards Nominees List: 'The Old Guard', 'Birds Of Prey' Among Honorees". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on October 1, 2020. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
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  35. ^ "2020 Winners | International Press Academy". Archived from the original on February 1, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  36. ^ Hall, Tim (February 8, 2021). "2020 Seattle Film Critics Society Nominations". Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on February 11, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  37. ^ "Annual StLFCA Awards". St. Louis Film Critics Association. Archived from the original on May 4, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  38. ^ Pedersen, Erik (March 2, 2021). "VES Awards Nominations: 'Tenet', 'Midnight Sky', 'Extraction', 'Soul' & 'Mandalorian' Among Titles In Visual Effects Hunt". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on March 2, 2021. Retrieved April 5, 2021.
  39. ^ Walk, Brian (April 12, 2022). "'Greyhound' Sequel in Development at Apple Studios". TheWrap. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  40. ^ Fleming, Mike Jr. (September 3, 2024). "Matt Damon & Casey Affleck On A Possible The Instigators Sequel At Apple, Streaming's Future, Their Chemistry & Some Serious Fenway Park Love". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved September 3, 2024.
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